Apollo 11 will probably go down in history as one of the major responses of two nations facing each other with threatening technologies - sometimes called mutually assured destruction. It was also the America's response to the apparent superiority of the Russians in putting objects into space before USA could.

History will remember the inhabitants of this century as the people who went from Kitty Hawk to the moon in 66 years, only to languish for the next 30 in low Earth orbit. At the core of the risk-free society is a self-indulgent failure of nerve.

Somebody would think I was trying to get favored treatment because my ancestors had the name Moon. And that's a joke.

I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup. It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements.

Going to Mars would evolve humankind into a two-planet species.

I don't think we're going to build a 50-person spacecraft or a 100-person spacecraft.

At the core of the risk-free society is a self-indulgent failure of nerve.